Bernadette Ortega, 50, looks outside and says, "I want to cry because I know what it is going to be like out there tonight." She has been staying at the Aristocrat Motel with the VOA for the past twelve days, but the time has ended there and there are no beds for her in Denver as the temperature hovers around 4 degrees F. Judy DeHaas, The Denver Post

Bernadette Ortega, 50, knocks on the door of Church in the City to try and get bus tokens. She has been staying at the Aristocrat Motel with the VOA for the past twelve days, but the time has ended there and there are no beds for her in Denver as the temperature hovers around 4 degrees F. Judy DeHaas, The Denver Post

On Monday night, when the temperature dropped to 5 degrees in metro Denver, as many as 35 solo homeless women were turned away from city shelters.

Although the number of unaccompanied homeless women in the metro area has tripled since 2007 — to 1,606 from 552, according to the 2009 Metro Denver Homeless Initiative’s point-in-time survey — there are only 241 shelter beds for solo women available in Denver.

Emergency-shelter beds “are extremely limited for women,” said Geoff Bennett, director of the Samaritan House. “There are many more men’s beds than there are beds for women.”

When the beds fill up, some of the women may receive motel vouchers, but they must meet certain criteria. And if they don’t, they must fend for themselves.

On some cold days, they go to The Gathering Place — a homeless resource center on High Street, near East Colfax Avenue — to work the phones, looking for a place to bunk.

On Tuesday afternoon, facing a forecast overnight low of minus 5, Laurallee Rucker said she was thinking about getting arrested on a misdemeanor so she’d have a warm place to stay.

Bernadette Ortega said she had slept on the street for the past three nights of single-digit temperatures, huddled in a cardboard box outside a downtown church.

On Tuesday afternoon, unable to find a bed for the night, she panhandled on Colfax, trying to get $42 for a hotel room.

“It’s really messed up,” Ortega said, frustrated at her inability to find shelter. “No matter how early you get up, whoever you call, the beds are already full.”

For the first time, the city this year funded 15 overflow emergency beds at The Delores Project, the city’s largest shelter for solo women.

Women who can’t get an emergency bed may be eligible for motel vouchers. But not every woman qualifies. Some women are on a do-not-readmit list because they have caused problems in the past. And experts said the vouchers are available only to people who have lived in Denver for 60 days.

Each person is limited to 12 nights of motel vouchers annually, although “we’re not going to be hard and fast with that on a night like tonight,” said Denver Human Services spokeswoman Jamie Glennon. “We are trying to do everything possible to get these women connected to services. We want to make sure these women are indoors during the cold weather.”

Those who fall through the cracks must be resourceful.

“They ride buses, or go to the airport, or hotel stairwells or hospitals,” said Billie Jean Crawford, resource advocate at The Gathering Place.

Some look for 24-hour big-box stores where they can hang out. Others panhandle for hotel money.

The city has been trying to devise a plan for churches to shelter the overflow, but that hasn’t panned out yet.

“I only knew of one church that was sheltering single women, but they had fire-code violations,” so now there are no churches, said Terrell Curtis, executive director of The Delores Project.

As advocates and city workers scramble to resolve the situation, they are careful to not point fingers or assign blame.

“It’s a communitywide problem, not the fault of any single (entity), including the city,” Curtis said.

Leslie Foster, director of The Gathering Place, believes part of the problem is systemic.

“In the mid to late ’80s, when a lot of services were started for men, homeless women were only 10 percent of that population,” she said. “Now, women are 42 percent of the homeless population, and 27 percent of (the homeless population) are children under 18. That’s nearly half the homeless population, and the services have not kept up.”

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